I was aware of her watching me through the pass-through while I was in the kitchen, gathering coffee mugs; waiting for the beans to grind and the coffee to brew. I couldn’t help wondering what this was all about. When I brought the coffee into the living room, she took the mug from the tray with one hand, but she still didn’t relinquish her grip on the purse.
Since Anne Marie was clearly so ill at ease, I made no attempt to join her on the window seat. Instead, I sat in one of the armchairs facing her. Hoping to make things better for her, I bumbled along, doing my best to carry on some semblance of polite conversation. In that regard, I was missing Mel in the worst way. She can always smooth out the kinds of difficult situations that turn me into a conversational train wreck.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your mother,” I said regretfully. “I’m afraid I lost track of her after your father died.”
“I’m not surprised,” Anne Marie replied. “Once Daddy was gone, Mother didn’t want to have anything to do with Seattle PD.”
“Had she been ill long?”
Anne Marie took a tentative sip of coffee and shook her head. “She had a bout with breast cancer several years ago, but she responded well to the treatment. Her doctors said she was in remission. When she got sick again, we thought at first that the breast cancer had returned. It turns out it was a different kind of cancer altogether—pancreatic—and there was nothing anybody could do.”
“Losing your mother is always tough,” I said.
Anne Marie gave me a challenging look, as though she suspected I had no real understanding of her situation. I could have told her that I had lost my own mother to cancer when I was in my early twenties and much younger than she was now, but I didn’t. Still hoping to be a good host, I tried changing the subject, only to land squarely on yet another painful topic.
“I guess the last time I saw you was at your father’s funeral.”
Anne Marie nodded. “I was only a sophomore in college when Daddy died. I’ve always hated funerals,” she added. “Mother did, too. She told me she wanted to be cremated, and she stated in writing that she didn’t want any kind of service. She probably did that for my sake because she knew how much funerals bother me.”
My bouncing unerringly from one loaded topic to another didn’t do much for putting Anne Marie at ease. Still, it must have worked up to a point, because after a brief pause she pressed forward with the real purpose of her visit.
She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath before saying, “Mother always blamed you for Daddy’s death. So did I.”
I was hard-pressed to summon a suitable response for that. I remembered the day Pickles Gurkey died like it was yesterday—in the middle of the afternoon on a rainy Monday. Pickles and I had just placed a homicide suspect under arrest. The guy had turned violent on us, and it had taken both Pickles and me to subdue him. The suspect was in cuffs and safely in the back of the car, when Pickles had suddenly staggered and fallen. At first I thought he’d been punched in the gut or something during the fight, but I soon realized the situation was far worse than that. He’d already had one heart attack by then, and here we were five years later with the same thing happening When I realized this was a second attack—and a massive one at that—I immediately called for help. Seattle’s Medic 1 was Johnny-on-the spot just as they had been the first time around. On this occasion, however, there was nothing they could do; nothing anybody could do.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did everything I could . . .”
Anne Marie waved aside my attempted apology. “I’m not talking about what you did that day,” she said brusquely. “Not when Daddy had his second heart attack. Mother and I blamed you because he went back to work after the first one.”
What can you say to something like that? Pickles was a grown man, and grown men get to make their own decisions. We were partners, but I didn’t make him come back to work. He wanted to. He insisted on it, in fact, but that was all ancient history. That first had happened back in 1973, almost forty years ago. Even if it had been my fault, what was the point in Anne Marie’s bringing it up now? Since I had nothing more to say, I kept quiet. For the better part of a minute an uneasy silence filled the room.
“I’m in a twelve-step program,” she explained finally. “Narcotics Anonymous. Do you know anything about them?”
I smiled at that. “Unfortunately I have more than a passing acquaintance as far as twelve steps go,” I said. “I’m more into AA than NA, if you know the drill.”
Anne Marie nodded. “So I suppose this is what you’d call an eighth step call.”
The eighth step in AA and NA is all about making amends to the people we may have harmed. At that moment, I couldn’t imagine any reason why Anne Marie Gurkey Nolan would possibly need to make amends to me, but then she continued.